George Keats of Kentucky

A Life

Lawrence M. Crutcher. foreword by John E. Kleber

Publication Year: 2012

John Keats's biographers have rarely been fair to George Keats (1797--1841) -- pushing him to the background as the younger brother, painting him as a prodigal son, or labeling him as the "business brother." Some have even condemned him as a heartless villain who took more than his fair share of an inheritance and abandoned the ailing poet to pursue his own interests. In this authoritative biography, author Lawrence M. Crutcher demonstrates that George Keats deserves better. Crutcher traces his subject from Regency London to the American frontier, correcting the misconceptions surrounding the Keats brothers' relationship and revealing the details of George's remarkable life in Louisville, Kentucky.

Brilliantly illustrated with more than ninety color photographs, this engaging book reveals how George Keats embraced new business opportunities to become an important member of the developing urban community. In addition, George Keats of Kentucky offers a rare and fascinating glimpse into nineteenth-century life, commerce, and entrepreneurship in Louisville and the Bluegrass.

Front cover

Title Page, Copyright

Contents

Foreword

Less than four months after the death of George Keats from a gastrointestinal
ailment on Christmas Eve 1841, his fellow countryman, Charles Dickens,
paid a brief visit to Louisville. The city was, he wrote, “regular and
cheerful; the streets laid out at right angles, and planted with young trees. ...

Preface

George Keats deserves better. John Keats’s multiple biographers, themselves
poets and scholars, have seconded George to younger brother status
or, worse, the “business” brother. George’s sudden death at age forty-four,
as he approached his prime as a civic and cultural leader, caused Louisville
to forget him. ...

The Pivotal Year 1827-1828

Perched on a gentle bluff overlooking the falls of the Ohio River, the George
Keats and Company’s Steam Planeing, Grooving, and Tongueing Mill was
turning out 4,000 board feet of lumber daily at a nice profit.1 Its proprietor,
who lived with his young family adjacent to the mill on Brook Street, had
good reason to be pleased. ...

Abandoned 1804-1814

George might never have come to Louisville, or even considered immigration
at all, but for the death of his father, followed by the children’s
abandonment by their mother. The breakup of the family triggered a continuum
of bad events, destroying dreams of upwardly mobile lives in London
and leading to George’s eventual exit. ...

Family Origins 1773-1804

The Keats brothers’ feelings of disenfranchisement were not simply
related to their abandonment. The clouded and undistinguished origins
of their family also contributed to their outsider status. The ancestral history
of the Keats family was typically sparse in a thinly documented Georgian
England. ...

Clarke's Schoolboys 1803-1810

Family life above the Swan and Hoop and then in Craven Street seemed
mostly happy and normal until the death of Thomas Keats in 1804, when
the themes of abandonment and financial concern rose to the fore. George
wrote: ...

Youths about London 1811-1818

For the next eight years, John and George embarked on separate but
overlapping lives. After being withdrawn from Clarke’s School, George
returned to the world of business in London, where he met his future wife,
Georgiana. John trained in Edmonton as an apothecary, simultaneously
discovering Spenser and poetry. ...

Separation and Emigraion 1818

The political and social cultures in England were difficult, but it was the
economic opportunity that drove George Keats’s decision to move to
America. The Regency era commenced in 1811, just as the boys left school.
It was a period of warfare, with the English twice defeating Napoleon, who
had subverted the French Revolution. ...

Henderson and Audubon 1818-1819

When George and Georgiana passed through Philadelphia in October
1818, they may have been introduced to John James Audubon’s father-in-law,
William Bakewell, by Michael Drury, their initial Philadelphia contact.
In turn, as they passed through Louisville, they most likely met Bakewell’s
son Tom, ...

Louisville 1819

Louisville was a settled town when George and Georgiana arrived in the
first half of 1819. It was in the final decade of its frontier period, starting
with the first pioneer settlement in 1778 and ending around the time the
town became a city in 1828 and the Louisville and Portland Canal opened
in 1830. ...

A Dismal Return 1820

Within a momentous twelve months spanning 1818 and 1819, George had
turned twenty-one, received his initial inheritance from his grandmother,
married, immigrated to America, and lost much of his inheritance. He left
no record of his activities during 1819, ...

Getting Established 1820-1826

While George was in London, a signal event occurred that would define
Louisville’s development and, indirectly, his opportunities over the next
two decades. On Christmas Day 1819 a special canal commission established
by five states bordering the Ohio River (Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania,
Virginia, and Kentucky ) ...

Who Failed the Poet? 1820-1821

John Keats’s death triggered three ugly sequences of events. First was
an immediate and epic spasm of finger-pointing and guilt transference
around the question of who failed the poet. Second was a ten-year slog to
unravel and finally settle the poet’s affairs in the broader context of his
grandfather’s and mother’s estates at Chancery. ...

Settling Affairs 1821-1828

Central to the relationship between George and John was their codependency,
at the core of which were money issues. John was somewhere
between oblivious and irresponsible when it came to financial matters,
whereas George was solvent but a rather sketchy bookkeeper during his
London years. ...

The Legacy Deferred 1821-1848

The most vexing and lasting issue was how best to define John Keats’s legacy.
George fretted over it until his death. Everyone in the poet’s circle
shared the belief that they had been touched by his greatness. But not
one of them succeeded in capturing and memorializing it, especially not
George. ...

Prosperity 1828-1841

Georgiana and the two children returned from England in November
1828 aboard the Britannia, arriving in New York’s South Street Seaport evidently
much refreshed by their stay. George wrote to his sister Fanny, “I was
on the beach ready to receive her, and was happy to see her and the children
look so well, they are certainly improved by the journey.” ...

Ruin and Death 1841

The last year of George’s life was not carefully chronicled. He entered 1841
at the apex of his career in Louisville, having been elected to the City Council
and continuing on several business and civic boards. He had become
a member of the establishment, a term coined by Emerson just two weeks
before George’s death.1 ...

Aftermath 1842-

The next two years were eventful. Georgiana, aged forty-five, married
twenty-five-year-old John Jeffrey. Their motivations, aside from the possibility
of real love, are lost to history. Some have speculated that his initial
interest was in seventeen-year-old Isabel, before her mother stepped
between them.
...

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